Perhaps my initial word choice evoked the wrong assumptions. Allow me me rephrase. I’ve related a dismaying image because the reality is dismaying. One group o

Perhaps my initial word choice evoked the wrong assumptions. Allow me me rephrase. I’ve related a dismaying image because the reality is dismaying. One group of (mostly awful and hateful) Internet users “wards off” another by copy-pasting what are to them, for all intents and purposes, magical runes. Scribe them down and the others disappear, banished by some arcane and unseen force. The crazy thing is that these runes may actually work, because the targeted users live under a system of censorship and surveillance unprecedented in its scope, scale, and level of detail. That’s nuts. It’s utterly fascinating. It’s (the block-text posting) not behavior to be emulated anywhere on HN. It is absolutely dismaying. And as a story, it’s also completely on-topic and within site guidelines.